The Streets of Slowwater
Tsila rose, and so did they all. Aremu bowed very deeply, one bow for Tsofi and one for Tsila, for all he knew there was no honor in him offering himself so. He was smiling still when he rose. “I will be at the Koketa’s Hive in Nutmeg Hil,” Aremu said, “at least through the end of the exhibition. I am at your disposal, ada’na.”
It was a lie, perhaps; perhaps not, Aremu thought. What Tsila wanted from him, he thought she would get; he was at her disposal, though perhaps it was not by his own hand.
They went out, through the red lit room, past the masked imbala at the door, their eyes a dark gleam in the spaces of their mask; they went up the stairs into the alleyway, past the statue of the fish headed god, whom Aremu still did not gaze on too directly.
Aremu wore his own mask, smooth and settled heavily on his face; he gazed out from beneath his even smile, his own eyes dark flickers in the space for them. His left hand and right wrist were in his pocket both, once more, though he had never bothered to hide anything of himself in Tsila’s meeting room.
Slowwater never slept, but the parade had long since ended, and it was awake in quiet places at this hour, awake in noise that drifted from behind colored doors and washed through phosphor street lamps, noise that smelt of tsenid and aqiti and stronger and stranger things by far.
“We can find a carriage on Udúqaqer’egid, sir,” Aremu said, quiet; his voice trembled briefly on the last word, but caught and did not break, not this time. His gaze lingered half sideways on Tom, and then looked out before them once more, back to the blue phosphor light casting strange long shadows against the ground.
They turned another dark corner, and Aremu stopped, looking at the wash of the main street ahead, bright with noise and sound, even further from sleeping than all the rest. Laughter and music drifted towards them, and a loud cheer went up and echoed distantly through the night. He didn’t begin again, didn’t - couldn’t - come out of the shadows to the street beyond.
“I need you,” Aremu said, turning to Tom. His voice was low, and soft, and he didn’t close the distance between them or take Tom’s hand in his; his lips twitched, and pressed together, and there was a furrow sunk deep into his forehead, squarely in the midst of it.
I need your hands, Aremu wanted to say, your lips and your tongue; I need to be myself with you, and I need for you to be yourself, with me; whatever that means for you, whoever we are together. I need to scrub this mask from my face, and I need to see you peel yours away; even if it is only in the shadows where I dare to whisper such things, even if we can be together only in secret, with the taste of orange on our tongues and the memory of poetry in our ears.
“I need to hold you and speak with you,” Aremu said, and his voice did tremble, this time, “tonight, Tom. I need -“ his throat ached, and he cleared it, and went on as best as he could. “I don’t have any plans, or any ideas,” he admitted, a crooked smile aching on his lips, “and I - whatever danger there is, I need you.”